


we needed this

by daydreamingstoryteller



Series: I'm Not Okay. But I Will Be. [3]
Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Break Up, Canonical Character Death, Dialogue Heavy, F/M, Gen, M/M, mentioned only - Freeform, mentions of past relationships - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-30
Updated: 2018-12-30
Packaged: 2019-09-30 16:44:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17227655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daydreamingstoryteller/pseuds/daydreamingstoryteller
Summary: Iris and Barry have a much needed talk, with a lot of confessions and tears.(Barry proposes but they both know that it'll never work. So they work things out.)Basically a snapshot from my Coldflash AU Series. Not really WestAllen. Coldflash and Westhawne only mentioned very briefly. This is basically a character introspection piece or something similar I guess.





	we needed this

**Author's Note:**

> If you haven't read the previous ones here's a tl;dr: Len and Barry secretly dated until Len died at the Occulus. Everyone found out about it during the Invasion of Dominators. 
> 
> After that, I basically stretched out Season 3 of the Flash so Iris and Barry started dating a month or so after everyone found out about past Coldflash. But the two of them are still not fully done mourning their respective past lovers.

“Iris Ann West will you marry me?”

The air around them fell silent. Time dilated. Barry could see the exact moment the smile on Iris’s face started to slip away. Time sped up back again as her face closed off. 

“I’m sorry Bare.” She whispered. “But we both know why we can’t do this.”

Barry rose up from the floor. He knew what she was talking about. He knew it the moment he didn’t feel a single ounce of disappointment when she said no. He knew it when all he felt at that moment, was pure relief.

Iris moved closer to him and held his hand within hers. The ring and the box still enclasped between them like a reminder of everything that could have been.

Iris looked at Barry and took a small breath. “Isn’t it time we both stopped pretending we make each other happy?” she breathed into the silence that had befallen their apartment.

Barry’s eyes started to fill with tears. He knew she was right. She always is but Barry couldn’t help but hold on to that tiny hope that maybe they were wrong and that they could make this work. It was foolish, but he wanted so desperately to hold onto something familiar because his current reality unnerved him.

“Iris...” _ I’m terrified of losing you _ . He added mentally.

“I know Barry... but we’ll be okay.” She answered as if she knew what he was thinking. One of her hands came up to cup Barry’s cheek. She used her thumb to gently wipe away a stray tear.

“Shhhh. I’m not going anywhere. Okay? I’ll always be in your life Bare.” She continued, her gaze never wavering from his as her hand lightly guided him to the couch.

The moment the duo sat down, Barry removed his hands from Iris’s grasp and let himself sink into her side, arms coming up to hug her. He laid his head on her shoulder as the ring box dropped to the floor, forgotten. 

“I don’t know what I’m doing Iris.” He confessed. “I need to stop Savitar. I need to stop him from taking you away and I thought maybe if we changed the future we could...I could...” he continued as his voice wavered. “I don’t know anymore....”

“Barry look at me.” Iris shifted herself so that she was looking at him, face to face. “I know you want to do everything you can to stop me from dying but this... this never should have happened in the first place.”

“Iris-”

“No. Hear me out, please. I know you love me and I love you too. But let’s stop pretending that we’re both in love with each other when we clearly aren’t anymore. I know you moved on while I was with Eddie and yea Bare I might have been in love with you at one point too, but I’m not anymore. Or at least, not in love with this version of you.”

“I’m still me Iris. I’m still your Barry.”

“You know I didn’t mean it like that. You’ll always be Barry Allen my best friend but we aren’t what the other needs as a partner anymore. I feel like I’ve been looking for who you used to be Barry... back when you were still happy. Or at least happier.”

“You make me happy Iris.”

“Not as much as he did.” Iris calmly stated. This wasn’t the first time the two of them had talked about the loves they’d lost. There have been multiple conversations whispered into the dark of the night, about both the pretty boy detective and the cold criminal turned legend. Sometimes they were often accompanied by nightmares and memories. 

Neither of them mentioned it in the morning, but at night, Barry always held Iris through the recurring images of gunshots and singularities, while Iris always woke Barry up from his screams of “Len”. 

“You are not my rebound Iris. I promise, I-”

“Barry please...” Iris begged her best friend. “I know neither of us are rebounds for the other but let’s be real. We left ‘us’ behind a long time ago and you know it. So please stop trying to make something that we both know has no future, work.” 

Barry stilled at the desperation in her voice. She really wanted to make him understand. They might have been what each other needed a few years ago. Maybe back then they could have worked. However now, all these years later, Barry’s more guarded and less carefree while Iris is more independent and ambitious, and both knew that their broken pieces would never fit together anymore. Especially not right then, when both of them still mourned their lost loves in a corner of their hearts. 

“We never should have tried this in the first place huh?” Barry asked finally. He had wanted to avoid this conversation but he knew it was a necessary one.

“No...I-I mean I’m glad we tried Barry but... I think all it’s showed us that we aren’t meant to be. Not in this timeline or this world at least.”

“You still remember Earth-2?”

“Of course I remember the Earth where I was the detective in the family.” Iris chuckled. “At least I know I would have made a great one I guess.”

“You - other you I mean- was the best cop of that CCPD.”

“Damn right she was.” Both Iris and Barry chuckled and some of the tension eased away from the pair. 

Barry finally got the courage to say what he couldn’t say a few minutes before.”I don’t want to lose you too Iris.” As he said those words out loud, his thoughts rushed past Ronnie, Eddie, Len, Bette, Tony, Earth 2 Joe, Laurel and his parents. He was interrupted form his musings when he heard Iris respond. 

“I can’t promise you that you won’t. Not with our line of work and I’m not just talking about the superhero gig. I’m a reporter and the daughter of a cop and the best friend of CCPD’s best CSI. I’ve always known that something like this could happen. And I know that you do too.”

“So we should just give up?” Suddenly Barry was filling with rage. At who, he didn't know. Maybe it was himself, maybe it was at Savitar, Zoom, Thawne or even Joe and Oliver. All he knew was that he was so tired and angry of losing more and more people he cared about. 

“That is not what I meant. Stop twisting my words Barry.” Iris chided him immediately. “Besides, I know you and everyone else would not give up until you solved this. But we’ve been going about this the wrong way.”

“Be honest with me Barry, why did you ask me to marry you all of a sudden? Now of all times?”

“I-” Barry started. He slowly pulled away from where he was hugging Iris and put some space in between them. He took a deep breath and calmed himself. He looked at his best friend and prepared himself for what he was about to reveal.

“I need to tell you something first Iris. And I need you to not say anything until I finish. This....look, what i’m about to say is really huge and I know I should have said this sooner but I just...I was so afraid and I didn’t want to know how any of you would react in the first place so I just hid this from all of you but now...”

“Barry...whatever it is, I promise you I will listen fully and I’ll always be here for you no matter what. You can tell me anything. You should already know that.” Iris interrupted softly.

“I know that Iris but this is.... Okay I’m just gonna say it and please don’t say anything until I’m finished.” Barry said and closed his eyes. He didn’t want to know what Iris’s reaction was going to be. He didn’t need to see the hurt and disgust. “I know who Savitar is.” He began.

A few seconds passed and true to her word, Iris kept quiet and let Barry continue at his own pace. 

“I- Savitar is me.”

***

 

The moment the words left his mouth, it felt like an entire burden had been lifted from his shoulders. He’d been carrying this awful, dark truth for a couple of weeks now, not knowing how to process anything. He didn’t know what to think much less worry about what his family would say. A part of him knew that they loved him and hoped that this truth wouldn’t make them abandon him but-

The small little boy who kept losing people he cared about was terrified. Nothing ever went right for him. He always got abandoned. He always got left behind and even though Barry thought that he deserved it sometimes, he still feared it terribly. 

So he did what he knew best. He ran away from the problem. He forgot about it, hid it like the dirty secret it was, and just pretended that he wasn’t being ripped apart by the guilt and grief every second. But no more. 

A few seconds passed without even a whisper of anything from the two people in the room. Barry still had his eyes closed so he didn’t know what Iris’s expression was. 

_ Oh god what if she hates me now? _ Barry thought as he clasped his hands to stop them from vibrating. Deciding that this was it, and that he might as well go all in, Barry took a small breadth before everything came spilling out of him like a dam that just broke - he figured in some ways it had. 

“Oh god - I..I’m so sorry Iris. I found out a week or two ago and I just couldn’t - no I mean I  _ didn’t  _ want to say anything cause, how do I tell you - all of you - that the guy that we’ve been trying to stop, the one that goes on to ki- kill you is... my future self?” Barry’s voices starts to crack and Iris continues to stay silent. This spurs him on to talk more. He had to make her understand.

“It’s just, apparently losing you is what turns me into Savitar, and Iris that’s like my worst nightmare. I- turn into my worst nightmare and I always knew I could but now that future is literally here in front of me that I can’t lose you Iris. NOt just because of what it means for me but just because I love you too much to let you go. You’re my best friend Iris. I can’t -”

“BARRY!” Iris yells. Only then does Barry realize that she’s on her knees in front of him, and that she’s crying too. It looked like she had been trying to get his attention for a while. 

Taking in his bewildered look, Iris gently lays her hand on the side of his face. 

“Bartholomew Henry Allen, I am not mad at you.” She says slowly, enunciating every word. “I am not scared of you. This isn't your fault.”

“But I-”

“No you shut up and listen to me now.” She says firmly. “I don’t care about who Savitar is.You might have been his past, but I promise you, that he will not be your future. We won’t let you become him. No matter what. All of us.”

"The future-”

“Is not set in stone. I’m assuming that why you proposed tonight right? Because you wanted to change the future” 

Barry could only nod in embarrassment. 

“Hey, it’s okay.” Iris gently wiped his tears. “You were desperate. I don’t blame you.” She whispered. She slowly tilted his head up to look at him properly. She’d never seen him this distraught. 

“I know it looks like there’s no way out, but we can do this together. All of us. But you have to let us in. We’re you’re family Bare. We would never let you turn into him.”

Barry leaned forward and let his forehead rest against hers. “I don’t know what to do.” His voice wobbled as he let the tears fall onto her hand. 

“We’ll talk to the team, and we’ll figure something out.” Iris reassured him. “This might be the end of us as a couple but we’ll always be best friends.” She let herself be hugged by him. “You’ve always been my rock Barry.” She breathed. 

They stayed there, clinging onto each other and silently crying until dawn broke. And as the new day brought them a new sense of hope, she promised to him, “We’ll be okay.” 

**Author's Note:**

> I randomly started writing this in the middle of a lecture back in February. Didn't mean to turn it into something part of the series but that happened. The last couple of hundred words are not my best work. They're a bit sloppy but i didn't know how else to end and stop so like, i'm sorry for the mess. ><
> 
>  
> 
> (any ideas for what you want to see in the rest of the series are welcome! I have an outline of how this series is going to go but new suggestions and ideas are always a blast! :)))


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